‘The Sandman’ franchise’s exploration of the Shakespeare authorship debate
In 1856, writer and scholar Delia Bacon questioned the authorship of William Shakespeare’s plays, arguing in her essay, “William Shakespeare and His Plays; An Enquiry Concerning Them,” that Shakespeare — given what is known of his humble background — could not have written the sophisticated plays attributed to him. Bacon suggested that Shakespeare’s elite contemporaries had authored them, utilizing Shakespeare as a cover. Bacon’s theory initiated an ongoing debate regarding the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, a topic that is explored by writer Neil Gaiman in The Sandman comics series; the debate is also prominent in the latest iteration of the Sandman mythos, The Dreaming: Waking Hours.
Written by G. Willow Wilson, with art by Nick Robles and colors by Mat Lopes, the comics series The Dreaming: Waking Hours features graduate student and single new mother Lindy Morris, who struggles to complete her dissertation on the Shakespeare authorship theories; she faces an academic advisor who is hostile to Lindy’s interest in how these theories have evolved over time and what these theories reveal about their proponents. At night, Lindy has recurring dreams of Shakespeare’s Stratford house — Lindy runs up its stairs hoping to find the playwright, but always wakes before she does.
Lindy’s life is further complicated by her encounter with Ruin, a nightmare who uses Lindy’s dream as a means to escape The Dreaming, the realm of Dream, one of the immortal Endless. Dream, who has authority over humanity’s dreams and stories, had imprisoned Ruin, and Ruin’s escape to the waking world inadvertently leaves Lindy physically trapped in her dream, where she encounters various representations of Shakespeare’s theoretical alternative authors: playwright Kit Marlowe; Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway; and a Muslim refugee from the Spanish Inquisition, Sheikh Zubayr, among others.
Finding Lindy’s baby and realizing his responsibility, Ruin enlists the help of the angel Jophiel and the sorceress Heather After to rescue Lindy from The Dreaming. Unaware of this, Lindy attempts to escape on her own by working to identify the true author of Shakespeare’s plays, believing this action will allow her to wake from her dream.
In his book Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, scholar James Shapiro examines the Shakespeare authorship debate. Shapiro notes that a dearth of information and documentation regarding Shakespeare’s life, as well as modern misunderstandings of contemporary commercial, cultural, and literary practices, have inspired doubts regarding Shakespeare’s authorship. Shapiro also explores how the interests and personal experiences of the various proponents of alternative authors may have shaped these proponents’ respective views on the subject.
In both topic and scope, Shapiro’s book is similar to the dissertation that Lindy hopes to write; in it, historic figures such as Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Sigmund Freud, among others, advocate for alternative Shakespeare authors.
Twain, believing that great writing could only be inspired from direct experience, as his works were, doubted someone of Shakespeare’s background could have written the plays credited to him, and favored the English philosopher Francis Bacon as the real author. Freud — unable to reconcile his psychoanalytic Oedipal theory (that Hamlet was inspired by Shakespeare’s father’s death) with the known dates regarding the father’s death and the play’s creation — thought Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, might have written the plays.
Of those challenging Shakespeare’s authorship, perhaps none is more tragic than Delia Bacon, the instigator of the debate. Although previous scholars had expressed difficulty reconciling what is known of Shakespeare’s life with his literary output, Bacon was the first to publicize the argument that alternative authors were responsible for producing the works attributed to Shakespeare.
A talented writer (she once beat Edgar Allan Poe in a story-writing contest), Bacon had the potential to be a successful playwright, but her New England Congregationalist family had religious objections to the theatre and discouraged her ambitions. Instead, Bacon became an acclaimed teacher and Shakespeare scholar, and in her studies came to doubt Shakespeare’s authorship. Her romance with a Yale ministry student — a younger man whose interactions with Bacon were deemed “imprudent” by her Congregationalist church — had caused a scandal. Moving from New Haven to Boston, Bacon continued her efforts to disprove Shakespeare’s authorship.
Inspired by the work of “Higher Criticism” scholars who used historic facts to evaluate religious and literary texts like the Bible and The Iliad, Bacon came to see Shakespeare’s plays as subversive political critiques of contemporary British monarchs, and believed that they were written not by the commoner Shakespeare, but by out-of-favor courtiers like Francis Bacon. Shapiro speculates that Delia Bacon’s crisis of faith with Congregationalism in the wake of her social scandal perhaps fueled her determination to challenge the established understanding that Shakespeare had authored his plays.
In her pursuit of evidence to support her authorship theories, Bacon is described as monomaniacal by some contemporaries, including Hawthorne, who wrote the introduction to Bacon’s 1857 book, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, which followed her provocative 1856 essay on the subject. Attacked by critics and dismissed by some as a mad spinster, Bacon suffered from poor mental and physical health. Travelling to England for research purposes, and allegedly eager to open Shakespeare’s tomb in order to look for proof that would confirm her theories, Bacon suffered a mental breakdown and was sent back to America, where she died in an asylum.
In The Dreaming: Waking Hours, Lindy’s passion for her Shakespeare research has also had a personal cost. To the Shakespeare variants, she confesses her struggles at balancing a career in academia with her responsibilities as a single mother. Lindy’s effort to identify the “real” Shakespeare becomes a cathartic exercise that allows Lindy to confront her fears of being a mother.
There is more to The Dreaming: Waking Hours than its examination of the long-standing Shakespeare authorship question. Ruin, Heather, and Jophiel have an engaging adventure, trying to rescue Lindy while avoiding the agents Dream dispatches to recapture Ruin. But Lindy’s effort to resolve the Shakespeare authorship debate is an important plot point, and it should be noted that the series’ exploration of the debate is not the first time that the Sandman mythos has commented on the topic.
The Dreaming: Waking Hours, debuting in 2020, is the most recent comic book series established in the Sandman mythos; the original The Sandman series, first published in 1988, also explores the Shakespeare authorship question.
Shakespeare appears in three issues of The Sandman: issue 13 (“Men of Good Fortune”), in which Dream makes a bargain with a young Shakespeare, who is presented as a mediocre playwright; in issue 19 (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”), readers learn that Shakespeare’s bargain with Dream requires him to write two plays for Dream, the first of which is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed in this issue for Dream and dignitaries from the Faerie realm; and issue 75 (“The Tempest”), the last issue of the series, sees Shakespeare deliver his play The Tempest to Dream as final payment for providing Shakespeare with the inspiration for his creative works.
Although Lindy strives to solve the Shakespeare authorship debate in the first issues of The Dreaming: Waking Hours, in the narrative continuity of the Sandman mythos, Shakespeare — with Dream’s patronage — is the confirmed author of his works.
In her paper, “Transforming Shakespeare: Neil Gaiman and The Sandman,” scholar Julia Round observes that Gaiman’s depiction of Shakespeare’s bargain with Dream “…can also be read as part of the long history of doubt surrounding Shakespeare’s work, which dates from 1728 and includes both factional and fictional works.”
Gaiman’s narrative exploration of this authorship question is nuanced. Round notes that “Although appearing to support bardolatry in his homage to Shakespeare, Gaiman’s frame in fact may be said to subvert it by depicting the Bard as talentless…” prior to Shakespeare making his deal with Dream, a depiction that supports the argument that Shakespeare lacked the life experience and skill to have written his plays on his own; however, Round suggests that perhaps Gaiman is responding to this argument by “…offering a more pleasing alternative…” in “…redefining Shakespeare as a divinely inspired genius.”
Round also notes that Gaiman, in issue 75, belies the impact of Dream’s bargain with Shakespeare. In their final meeting, Dream acknowledges Shakespeare’s “gift” and “talent” when the playwright asks why Dream chose him for the bargain. Dream also addresses Shakespeare’s fears that his plays are the products of witchcraft; his response suggests that Shakespeare’s works, though inspired, came from the playwright, and not directly from Dream: “There is no witchcraft, Will, no magic. I opened a door within you, that was all.”
The Shakespeare authorship debate continues, and the Sandman mythos provides thoughtful, affecting explorations of this debate, perhaps inspiring readers to learn more about Shakespeare, the works attributed to him, and the doubts and questions regarding his authorship.
NOTES AND FURTHER READING:
The Dreaming: Waking Hours (G. Willow Wilson, Nick Robles, Mat Lopes, et al., DC Comics, 2020) — the article above referenced material included in the first five issues of the series.
The Sandman (Neil Gaiman, et al., DC Comics, 1988/1989) — the article above specifically references issues thirteen, nineteen, and seventy-five.
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (James Shapiro, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010)
“Transforming Shakespeare: Neil Gaiman and The Sandman” (Round, J., 2010. In: Frus, Phyllis, ed. Beyond Adaptation: Essays on Radical Transformations of Original Works. Jefferson NC, USA: McFarland, 95–110.)
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